Throughout time, there have always been things that are edible that shouldn’t be consumed. Navigating what you eat with this in mind is critical to choosing foods that nourish your body and contribute to your ability to be well.

     Hi there, it’s Elaine Gardner, the founder of DesignYourHealthyLife.com. Today I want to talk to you about food. You’re probably aware that I had significant health struggles for a long period – more than two decades of my life. And after I made the commitment to get better and found some healing modalities that really started to support my desire to get well, I also started to realize that there were things that I was doing – personal habits – that were not serving my desire to, not only achieve better health, but to get to a point where I could maintain long-term health. And one of those issues that required a good, hard, long look was all about food.

     I was eating better than what most people were eating, just because I had to on a day-to-day basis in order to feel well, but there were still things that I was putting in my mouth that I wasn’t really sure what they were. Things like trans fats, processed sugars, or ingredients on a box of crackers that I didn’t fully understand. So I started to really take a good, hard, long look at those things and really made some significant changes about the food that I was eating, the food that I was buying, and the food that I was bringing into my home and feeding my family. And it made a huge difference for me and it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself.

     Over the years I’ve gotten very educated about food and I’m really committed to very high quality products. And sometimes I’ve been kind of poked fun at for being so choosy about food. One person once said to me that I was the only one who thought that food was poison. And I have some really interesting thoughts about that now, and certainly everyone’s entitled to their opinions, and I’m still really committed to eating really well. I understand that was coming from a place of lack of education about what’s in the food supply, and that I actually knew what I was talking about and was making good choices for myself. But the thought that I had recently was, just because you can eat something because it’s edible, doesn’t mean that you should eat something. And that this has been true throughout time for human beings.

     Thinking back to a time where people were hunter-gatherers and foragers, there would have been things that were edible, like mushrooms and berries and some of the varieties would have made people incredibly sick or potentially even poisoned them to the degree where they lost their lives. So it was a trial and error type of thing, even while they were foraging and hunting and gathering things in the natural world. And the benefit of that time period was that people were living in tribes or communities, so that information would have been passed on, so the next group to go out and gather food would have avoided those poisonous mushrooms and those berries that were going to make them tragically sick. And other things that were passed on as well, and we don’t have those communication networks anymore to pass that information along.

     And we’re also bombarded by advertising and marketing all the time, telling us the latest and greatest thing about discoveries, that this is the best super food available and this, that, and the other thing. And while some of that information is correct, a lot of it is driven by corporate profits and not with the health of the public in mind. So you really need to be educated, and get educated on your own and understand what the ingredients are in the food that you’re purchasing, so you can decide for yourself whether those things are healthy or unhealthy for you. So again, just because it’s edible and you can put it in your mouth, doesn’t mean you should eat it.

     I hope that thought serves you well and encourages you to be more careful when you’re out and about at the grocery store and the farmers markets, wherever you’re purchasing food. Ask a lot of questions from, if you’re buying local and you have that transparency to be able to ask, the food producers. Or to read packages when you’re at the grocery store and to understand exactly what it is that you’re buying and putting into your body, and whether or not that’s going to support your body’s ability to be healthy, not only today, but on a long-term basis so that you can have the health and the vitality that you need in order to live a full and vibrant and enjoyable life.

     I hope that serves you well. If you have any questions about any of that, as you know I’m always open to hearing back from you. This is truly what I’m passionate about and I love to support you in your healing and long-term wellness plan. So reach out and let me know, and again, I know it’s a complicated food system that we have available to us these days and I’m going to be getting into more depth with those issues in the coming months, so I look forward to talking to you again soon.